The Challenge:EAS (Experimental and Applied Sciences) created the fitness and sports nutrition products category. The brand owns a leadership position among fitness enthusiasts and pro athletes as a provider of effective and healthy meal replacement and nutritional supplement products. EAS developed the Body-for-LIFE (BFL) Fitness Challenge as a vehicle to promote and demonstrate the power of their healthy lifestyle principles and products to help transform bodies and minds in just 12 weeks. However, the brand was underleveraged as an effective lifestyle alternative with millions of Americans who annually bounce from fad diet to fad diet in search of an effective and sustainable answer to weight problems and the social/psychological issues that often accompany them.
The Solution:Body-for-LIFE Million-Dollar Challenge
Abbott Laboratories saw untapped equity in the
Body-for-LIFE as an event-marketing platform. BFL could be utilized as a powerful pathway to generate trial and acquire new customers. The target: a growing audience of unsatisfied dieters and burnt-out weekend fitness warriors who need a program that achieves fitness and weight goals more effectively. The agency built a multi-faceted consumer education campaign alongside an extraordinary incentive: the winner of the 2005 fitness Challenge would become an instant millionaire. And while this at first may appear to be the foundation of the campaign, it was just one element in an over-arching objective -- put
Body-for-LIFE on the radar screen as a reliable, credible alternative to fad dieting.
A three-part strategy was developed: first, launch the lifestyle program in mainstream media to build a baseline of awareness, using real-people testimonials and outside independent experts to help authenticate the BFL fitness approach. Second, launch a book,
Body-for-LIFE for Women, targeted to the core audience who would resonate to this inspiring message with information they can use to help transform their lives. Finally, introduce the Million Dollar Challenge as an exciting way to get involved, to get started and change your life.
Model and fitness buff Cindy Crawford helped launch the awareness campaign on ABCs
The View program. Former
Body-for-LIFE Champions and local followers were positioned as living proof of the transformational benefits of this lifestyle. In Phase II
Body-for-LIFE for Women (
BFLFW) was introduced on the NBC
TODAY Show as millions watched Katie Couric take a hammer to a bathroom scale while author and spokesperson Dr. Pamela Peeke announced that
Body-for-LIFE could free women from slavery to scale weight. Building on this momentum a broad array of national media activities continued in
USA TODAY,
"O" Magazine and a host of other targeted outlets utilizing the book as a launch vehicle for the Challenge program. The Million Dollar Challenge winner was unveiled at a
Body-for-LIFE EXPO in Denver where over 2,000 brand fans paid to attend a two-day conference on healthy living featuring nationally recognized authorities on health, weight and nutrition.
ResultsOver 390 million media impressions in blue chip media environments helped put
Body-for-LIFE squarely in the national consciousness as a credible, reliable, sustainable alternative to fad diets. The
BFLFW book surged to the number five position on the New York Times non-fiction best-seller list. The brand received more media attention than any other time in its history.
Body-for-LIFE now owns a strategic role in EAS marketing as a highly effective introduction experience to their products and a way to forge relationships with millions of new brand fans. Challenge participants become the first tier of early adopters for new products and nutrition technologies now being introduced.
SEE THE RESULTS click to enlarge
